Vintage Rob

Chapter 23 - Rob's Match

A management agency coordinated Rob's media events for the Gears. After several rock bands contacted them about hiring him for photo shoots, he expanded their services, authorizing them to book him through mid-April.

Then, about three weeks before he planned to go to Tokyo, Lynn moved into the extra room in his apartment. Hours after he sank himself into the newspaper, visited friends, or returned from a morning racquetball game with his brother Gene, Lynn would emerge from her room, often with a different young woman than the last time he noticed.

They ate toast, chatted amicably, and disappeared for the day, so Lynn's presence barely changed his life, except for a closed bedroom door and more beer in the refrigerator. A few days after she arrived, he drove to New York to photograph rock bands. Anna Lord, the Gears bassist, always cleared them beforehand as worth his time. During the trip, Rob met her father, Alan Lord, at their favorite bar, the dive with few customers. Rob swore the old men playing pool in back were cardboard cut-outs.

According to Alan, the FBI's investigation into the massacre in Afghanistan had petered out. He adjusted his blue suit coat as if worried a weapon showed. "See, no conservative agenda to jail British rock stars or liberal journalists." Alan's bald pate caught the light because his whole head moved when he smiled.

Alan enjoyed needling Rob, calling him a liberal, but in reality, he did not give a damn what you looked like, where you came from, or whether or not you agreed with him. "What about Mark?" Rob said. "That go anywhere?"

"I passed on the information. It's up to my colleagues in Boston to look into it."

"Do you think Mark's a threat?"

Alan shrugged. "I trust your judgment, but you're not law enforcement, and it's not an easy thing to predict."

"True." Rob had not heard from Mark, so hopefully that was the end of it. He couldn't recruit Mark for a spy job, that's for sure. "How's Anna reacting to all the success?"

"She's still driving her beat up El Camino."

Rob could picture the car's dents but not its color - green maybe? He hoped success did not spoil Anna. "What do your colleagues say about the Gears?"

Alan grabbed a handful of mixed nuts from a bowl on the bar. "They're not so smug anymore about their kids' overpriced grad programs, I'll tell you that."

***

After an entertaining evening with Alan Lord, Rob drove back to Boston. At two-thirty in the morning, he walked up the narrow staircase to his second floor apartment and opened the door. A band of Lynn's pierced friends and tattooed coworkers from the coffee shop congregated in the living room. Rob smiled and put down his gym bag.

"Sorry," Lynn said. Her short blond hair stuck up in careful spikes. Her black-rimmed glasses tilted as she crinkled her nose. "I thought you were coming back tomorrow."

Since the Gears CD topped the charts, Rob had refrained from most socializing with strangers. So far, Kevin had been right about Lynn being simultaneously down-to-earth and too cool for school. In the short time he had known her, she had never talked about the Gears. The girls who had shared her bed and toast had shown the same, admirable restraint and indifference.

A group though?

"It's your place too," Rob said. He took the proffered bottle of beer and sat on the couch. They were still conversing in the living room when he closed the door to his bedroom and took off his socks, feeling uptight and bourgeois. Compared to their uninhibited, hedonistic exploits, his string of broken relationships and one-night stands was a pathetic mockery of sexual liberation and love.